“Many people have offered me unsolicited advice over the past few days about what I should do to promote my personal reputation,” Rosenstein told about 1,000 people gathered for the Greater Baltimore Committee’s annual dinner meeting at a downtown hotel.

“I took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. There is nothing in that oath about my reputation. If you ask me, one of the main problems in Washington, D.C., is everybody is so busy running around trying to protect their reputation instead of protecting the republic, which is what they’re supposed to be doing.”…

He said a friend sent him a text message after the memo on Comey was released, urging him to “get out of there.”

“I responded to my friend and I said, ‘There is no place I would rather be,'” Rosenstein said.